Wadsworth Explains...
01 November 2017
I'm happy to report that the murder has been successfully solved! Six people deduced all the clues correctly and found the culprit and their weapon. To help make sense of the last week's events, we must turn to our trusty butler Wadsworth, to lay it all out for us...
So, with eight suspects and six weapons and two policemen and one body, the question is who did it? Well we can rule out the obvious straight away - those protesting students have been chained to that fence since they got here, and with only Bill Witchell’s stolen wrench to free themselves! Quite rightly you caught this, and ALL avoided them!
But there’s another suspect with no votes - the Queen herself! Queen Liz was suspiciously absent from the Games Night, and claims to have been watching television the entire time! And yet, her crown jewels still missing would imply she wanted to get into Rand’s safe, so did she? Well, if she supposedly phones the vote numbers every night one must only take a trip to the BT tower to pry into her private phone logs and confirm that yes! - she was in all night spending your money voting for Richard Coles. Do nobody tell her he was voted out weeks ago, lest she chops off your head.
Now with six suspects left to peruse it gets more interesting, as these suspects ALL received votes! Firstly to start with poor Barry & Keith, whom only one of you believed could be the murderers-at-large - and the two people who have been carrying around mighty great axes throughout this entire evening! But as anyone who made a visit to the post office will know, this pair were up to something much more sinister - YOGA! Following of course their exhaustive tower jobs standing around all day they spent their Saturday evening at Slim Jim’s Gym stretching their lycra.
But of course they were not the ONLY ex-Tower employees under suspicion - who could forget charming chap Groundskeeper Billie. A man so foul-mouthed and Scottish he could only have been up to no good - and with a bloodied axe in his basement none looks more guilty! Of course as all you super sleuths spotted, the blood belonged to sheep! But why would a Scotsman be out murdering sheep in the dead of night - Mr. Butcher? Yes Mr George Butcher the Butcher, local London Butcher and notably out of mutton, formerly a supplier of Mr Billie with haggis! And haggis, though popular in Scots cuisine, are not often to be found in Washington D.C. - the Groundskeeper is killing those sheep and making it himself! Which of course anyone who could decipher his dialogue would have understood.
SO - no axe and no wrench, and four suspects eliminated leaves us with one plus two plus two plus one - FOUR a piece! This is where it gets interesting, and where our new detectives had most trouble discerning the fact from the fiction. On preliminary investigations throughout the casino, an obvious place to look would be the security room to replay the CCTV footage from before and after the power cut - and lo behold, two of our suspects! Mr Andrew Clark, boastful millionaire and owner of large circular objects, and Mr Niles Kress, supposedly respectable mayor of the city! And while this footage may appear to incriminate them both, one of these men is clearly INNOCENT!- of murder at least. Clark could never have entered that casino, as he has long been on the list of barred patrons due to his repeated harassment of our victim! He walks right past the door and round to the back, to leave his mark on the casino in another way - graffiti! A vandal he may be, but a murderer he is not!
But Mr. Kress on the other hand denies all knowledge of being at the casino that night - he was at the launch of Romeo and Juliet! A play all scholars know involves… deadly poison! Poison which must never have left the theatre however, as our poor Juliet confirms - it was being used in the play! So how did Mr. Kress kill Rand? With his giant ribbon cutting scissors he had brought to the theatre for the opening? NO OF COURSE NOT! Those scissors stayed in the theatre all night, he can be clearly seen on CCTV unarmed and not even trying to hide! The Mayor, having snuck out of a frankly dreadful performance of Romeo & Juliet through the sewers to the casino - a building he personally made sure was built, because, what else - he’s a crippled gambling addict. So much council tax money going missing, the underground being broken all week and the power out - siphoned off for Mr. Kress’ personal habits!
And now the most fought battleground - the two suspects who received the lion’s share of your voting. One innocent, one guilty as sin. One a man of the cloth, and one with an abhorrent taste in clothes. Both live AND work right next door to that casino, and had ample opportunity to sneak inside and do the deed! Mr Cooper claims he is meeting with his other client, yet Father Jack claims he was hosting Saturday mass in the Cathedral. But who is telling the truth? Of course, neither of these slimy fellows are - a quick chat with local London gardener Leslie Hiller would reveal that Father Jack was absent from this week’s mass, and sneaking around Cooper’s other construction at Canary Wharf shows that his client was actually meeting on Friday, and was away the entire weekend. So two men right next door to the casino, both with significant money issues, and both with faulty alibis.
Well Mrs Peacock, we must prove that either of these two men were doing something else - something they are not willing to admit to the police. But after some conversing, it is clear that Father Jack has access to not one but _two _potential murder weapons - the candlestick, stolen from his very church, and the lead piping, broken by casino construction! But talking to the Father also shines an unsettling light on a dirty habit - dwindling donations related to an obsession.. with FUNKOS! As anyone knows, those plastic lumps are not cheap. For a man like Father Jack, collecting toy figures would require some extra income - stolen from donations to fix the church! But to confirm Jack’s whereabouts at the time of the murder, we need to trace these Funkos back to their source - Forbidden Planet. It is lucky our priest tried to cover his tracks, as he left his receipt right there at the counter - dated right at the time of the murder with £240 spent on toys!! A heinous waste of kindly donated money.
Which leaves but one man.. Mr Gregory COOPER! The architect of this casino and the architect of this entire crime! Left out of pocket following Rand’s ever-changing design demands, Cooper became obsessed with retrieving his payday. But he knew a secret, something shared between only himself and Mr. Rand - the location of his hidden safe. Seizing his opportunity during games night, he makes his way to the casino when BANG - London finally reaches breaking point, the grid surges, and the entire city’s power goes out. Leaving his office in the darkness, he spots the only building left with light - candlelight. He sneaks inside St. Paul’s while Father Jack is absent, grabs himself a candle to navigate by and heads into the casino. But there’s one thing he DIDN’T count on - Mr. Rand still being inside his office! The two scuffle in the dark, and our intruder must use the only weapon he has to hand, a giant brass candlestick! With one mighty blow, the soft wax snaps straight off the stuck. Luckily for Mr Cooper, he has no more need for the flame as the power is restored, leaving him to ransack the billionaire’s safe. And his intricate knowledge of the building allows him to leave without being seen by the cameras - through the hidden escape tunnel to the roof! Taking his bounty and his weapon, he scales to the rooftop and makes his way down through the car park, exiting right outside his own office. Still nerve racked from the altercation, he forgets to replace the candlestick to St. Paul’s and keeps it on his desk, right in front of investigative eyes this entire time.
Take him away Mr. Hoover!
I'm sorry, he does like to elaborate a bit. To summarise - it was of course Gregory Cooper with the Candlestick! Well done to everyone who took part, and a congratulations to those who got it bang on. Enjoy your limited edition never-available-again pins, and please don't sell them on ebay.
